10 Apple Music Tips You Need to Know

The Apple Music streaming service is an excellent way to listen to, discover and share the music you love. Even among heavyweight competitors, it manages to hold its own, while also offering some deeper device integration and exclusive features. But Apple Music has a ton of features and functionality that’s either relatively unknown or hidden. To make your listening experience the best it could possibly be, here’s a list of our top 10 Apple Music tips and tricks.

10. Fine-Tune Your Music Preferences

When you first sign up for Apple Music, you’re prompted to input some artists and genres you like (or dislike). But Music continues to learn your preferences and refine its recommendations long after that process is over. Like a song? Give it a Heart by tapping on the Ellipses menu in Now Playing. (You can also find the Dislike button in this menu). Eventually, Apple Music should get better at playing exactly what you want to listen to.

9. Stream High-Quality Audio Over Cellular Data

In order to conserve you mobile data, Apple Music automatically disables high-quality streaming unless you’re connected to Wi-Fi. Of course, if you want to throw caution to the wind and listen to the best quality audio available, just go to

8. Wake up to Your Apple Music Library

Getting tired of waking up to Radar? Many people know how to add Ringtones to your iPhone via iTunes, but you can also wake up to basically any song from your Apple Music catalog. Just open up Clock > Alarm, and add a new alarm (or edit an old one). Above the vanilla ringtones, there should be an option to Pick a song. Tap on that, and you can choose a track from your Apple Music library.

7. Use Siri’s Deep Integration

One advantage that Apple Music has over competitors like Spotify and Pandora is its deep integration with Siri. You might as well take advantage of it. Just activate Siri, and ask her a variety of things — from “play my Classical Playlist” to “play Drake.” You can even just say “play some tunes,” and Siri will play a shuffled playlist from your library. If you have hands-free Hey Siri activated, this feature becomes even more convenient.

6. Listen to Older Beats 1 On-Demand Shows

Apple’s Beats 1 live radio station is an excellent way to find new and interesting music to listen to. But what if your favorite shows don’t work with your schedule? Luckily, you can listen to Beats 1 shows on-demand — as long as you subscribe to Apple Music. Just go to Radio > View All Beats 1 Shows. You can then navigate to the particular show that you want to listen to.

5. Download Songs for Offline Listening

With Apple Music, you can jam out to your favorite songs — even without a data or Wi-Fi connection. Any song that you can listen to, you can download for offline listening. Just tap on the Plus sign next to a song, and then tap the Download icon. Too much hassle? You can set Apple Music to automatically download songs added to your library by going to Settings > Music and enabling Automatic Downloads.

4. Change Music’s Rating System

Apple changed the star rating system to a simpler and more streamlined like or dislike in iOS 10. As of iOS 10.2, however, you have the option of switching back to the old system. Just go to Settings > Music and make sure that Show Star Ratings is enabled. Once it’s on, you’ll find a star rating option under the contextual menu in Now Playing.

3. Share Your Latest Discoveries with Rich Links

As of iOS 10, Apple added some extra features to iMessage that make sharing songs via the platform a breeze. Just open the iMessage app drawer and tap on the Music option. iMessage will then show you your most recently played songs, which you can then send to another iOS 10 user as a rich link — meaning that they don’t have to leave iMessage to hear the track.

2. Sort Playlists, Songs and Albums

In iOS 10.2, Apple quietly updated Music with the option to choose a sort order for playlists, songs, albums and video lists in your library. When viewing any of these categories, a Sort or Edit option will now appear in the upper-right corner. You can sort Playlists by Type, Title or Recently Added, and sort Songs or Albums by Title or Artist.

1. Make Storage Management Automatic

Downloading songs can be a great way to listen to your favorite tunes offline — but music can add up quick as far as storage goes. Rather than hassle with managing your downloaded music yourself, there’s a clever little feature that does so automatically. Just go to Settings > Music > Optimize Downloads, and select the minimum amount of songs you want to keep by GB. When storage gets tight, Apple Music will then automatically delete songs that you haven’t listened to in a while, or songs added long ago.